On Belfort throwing the spinning kick earlier in the fight
and then landing it the second time: “I didn’t expect him
to throw it a second time. That’s why I was so surprised. Sometimes
guys do that and they’re just slightly out of range and they just
do it to kind of give the other guy a different look, but when he
threw it again, he was definitely trying to hit him with it. It
just so happened that the first one was off angle. Luke Rockhold
was holding his hands down pretty low, particularly his left hand,
and that’s what ended up hurting him. The reason he got hurt so bad
is he didn’t see the kick at all. It just kind of caught him
completely by surprise. That’s why he ended up getting dropped by
it besides the fact that it was actually perfectly placed. He
didn’t see it at all -- that was the biggest problem.”

On throwing a low-percentage technique like a spinning
kick: “A lot of times it’s to throw the guy off and to
keep the guy on his toes. You’re being a little bit unpredictable.
Another reason is to see how they react. Maybe Vitor saw something?
Maybe [Rockhold] was dropping his left hand, for example? He knows
the next time he’s going to throw the same technique, the same
thing’s going to happen. If he makes an adjustment, maybe he steps
off to his left prior to throwing the kick, kind of cut him off
prior to throwing the kick, he’ll have a better chance of actually
landing the shot. It kind of just depends. Some guys will throw it
and try to hit the guy with it. Some guys will throw it and say,
‘What’s he going to do? Is he going to step back? Is he going to
cover up? Is he going to drop his hands and try to catch the kick?’
It’s just to see what the guy does.”

On setting up the second kick: “If Vitor had
thrown that kick right after he had thrown the first one, then it
would have never landed. But the fact was he mixed it up. He
circled around. He threw some punches, whatever the case was, and
then he kind of made Rockhold forget about the kick and then he
threw it again. It’s real important that if you come close to
something like that, you don’t just throw it right away. The same
thing happened with [Josh Thomson
against Nate Diaz].
Thomson threw two or three of them, but if you look at the
separation and time between the kicks, they weren’t right away.
They were like a minute, two minutes later, three minutes later
because then the guy tends to forget about that.”

On Rockhold not being instantly knocked out: “You
couldn’t plan to land that kick any better. As a matter of fact,
I’m surprised that Rockhold didn’t go out instantly. … Credit to
Luke Rockhold and how tough he is because I was actually surprised
he didn’t go out instantly.”

On Belfort’s finishing skills: “The problem with
Vitor is, he hits you one time and I don’t think there’s a better
finisher. I mean Anderson [Silva] maybe. He’s so fast and he’s so
accurate with his strikes that you don’t want to get hit with that
first one because you’re going to get 15 more two seconds right
after.”

On spinning kicks: “They’re hard to do. They’re
hard to pull off. The guys that can do it are guys like [Jose] Aldo
and [Anthony] Pettis and [Edson] Barboza -- freak athletes that are
incredible strikers to begin with. That’s why it’s so surprising
that Vitor did it. Not to say he’s not an incredible striker, but
he’s definitely getting better at aspects of his game. That’s two
in a row. That’s not an accident.”

On training spinning kicks: “You can’t be throwing
that stuff in sparring. You could really hurt somebody. How are you
drilling it? I’m not like a capoeira guy or anything like that.
Even when I would throw spinning back kicks and stuff, I was
throwing them like 30-percent power because I didn’t want to hurt
my partner. How do you drill the precision to land that kick? I
don’t know.”

On the power in the kick: “It’s almost like you’re
swinging a hammer, but he’s doing it from the hip. … When you’re
throwing a punch or even a spinning back fist, it’s nothing like a
heel kick. It’s ridiculous. It’s crazy power. It’s like getting hit
in the side of the head with a bat.”

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